Martin Scorsese attached to direct The Snowman

Martin Scorsese is cooking up his next batch of wonder and whimsy, signing on to follow Hugo with The Snowman, an adaptation of a Norwegian novel about how one family is forever changed by its unexpected encounter with the titular character. Except this snowman isn’t like any other snowman—he has a button nose, two eyes made out of coal, and he’s also the calling card left by a rampaging serial killer. Thumpety thump thump, etc. The story is the seventh in author Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole series, which concerns a loose cannon, functioning alcoholic detective who gets results, damn it, all while presumably being followed around by a pack of snickering seventh-graders who keep asking him to repeat his name. World War Z screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan will handle the script, with Nesbo saying that he’d given Scorsese license to tell the story in his own way—beginning with not insisting that it be set in Oslo. Presumably he’ll also be cool with Leonardo DiCaprio and/or holograms.